Face transplant patient overcomes tragedy through music

Aug. 11, 2013
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Carmen Tarleton, a Thetford, Vt., woman who received a face transplant six months ago to replace the one her husband burned beyond recognition in 2007, turned to writing and music as a way to heal emotional wounds during a painful and slow physical recovery. / Maddie McGarvey, The Burlington (Vt.) Free Press

by Brent Hallenbeck, The Burlington (Vt.) Free Press

by Brent Hallenbeck, The Burlington (Vt.) Free Press

THETFORD CENTER, Vt. -- A little more than a month before she would receive a new face to replace the one her ex-husband burned beyond recognition, Carmen Tarleton decided to take piano lessons. She had time on her hands, and after more than five years spent recovering from her horrible physical injuries she wanted to plunge into something creative.

In the nine months since that first lesson â?? which she took with a teacher with whom she would fall in love â?? Tarleton has learned a handful of songs. She played two of those tunes on a recent afternoon at her apartment in Thetford Center: "Desperado" by The Eagles and the gospel classic "When the Saints Go Marching In."

The first of those songs is a melancholy tale of loneliness and despair ("Your pain and your hunger/They're driving you home â?¦ Your prison is walking through this world all alone"); the second is a celebratory number about mortality and resurrection ("Some say this world of trouble/Is the only one we need/ But I'm waiting for that morning/ When the new world is revealed").

Those songs have a lot to say about Tarleton's life: She has had more than her share of confrontations with loneliness and despair, and with mortality and resurrection, since Herb Rodgers burned her with industrial-strength lye on June 10, 2007.

She has turned that tragedy into victory. Her face transplant in February gave Tarleton a new look, but she chose during her recovery to give herself a new outlook. The mother of two and former nurse came to realize that a positive attitude would help her heal faster, and her optimism in the face of terrible violence helped others suffering from physical and emotional pain to heal as well.

That idea convinced the Fairlee native to write a book about her experience. "Overcome: Burned, Blinded, and Blessed," published by Writers of the Round Table Press of suburban Chicago, is initially about being overcome by pain, by disfigurement, by hate. Gradually, "Overcome" refers to Tarleton conquering the negative forces in her life through forgiveness.

She couldn't do a lot about her physical pain; doctors, nurses, medicine and time would help with that. But she was in total control of her emotional pain, and did all she could to eradicate it. Her physical recovery is extraordinary, but perhaps not as extraordinary as her psychic recovery.

Tarleton admits in "Overcome" that she had one moment during her ordeal when she wondered if life was worth living. She convinced herself it was.

"I am more than just my pain," Tarleton wrote in her book. "I was a spirit having a human experience. I could find peace and joy without physical death."

Her creative pursuits â?? writing her book and playing music â?? have helped bring much of that peace and joy to the life of Carmen Tarleton.

Finding inspiration

While sitting in her apartment on a recent Monday afternoon, Tarleton's most pressing injury was one that had nothing to do with the attack that burned more than 80 percent of her body: She was elevating and icing an ankle she sprained after slipping on steps a couple of weeks earlier.

The signs of the attack six years ago, though, are still there. Her arms are scarred; her hair is patchy. Her new face, which she received at a Boston hospital six months ago, is still not flexible enough for her lips to move much when she speaks. Her kitchen counter holds row upon row of pill boxes; Tarleton said she takes close to a dozen different medicines and estimates that she swallows close to 45 pills a day.

Tarleton, now 45, realized about a year after the attack that she wanted to write a book about her experience that has received national attention. She was blind (subsequent surgeries have restored some of her sight) and covered in open wounds, but survived an attack some medical personnel thought she could not. Friends and supporters would come to her home and be uplifted to see that she was dealing gracefully with her pain.

"I was realizing that people were so happy when I was doing well. I knew that there was something to that," Tarleton said. The idea of writing a book about finding inspiration from tragedy was born.

The physical act of writing, however, was difficult. Scarring on her neck made it hard to sit up straight. She wrote for 10 or 15 minutes a day for a year, but the pain made it too difficult for her to continue.

She hired Writers of the Round Table Press, and editors there listened to Tarleton tell her story over the phone and recorded her words. They went over each chapter with her through phone calls and emails. They finished the book last fall after nine months of work and published it March 1. Writers of the Round Table Press specializes in what its website refers to as "Books that do more than inform - they inspire."

Tarleton feels good about "Overcome." "It was just what I wanted. It wasn't too flowery, there was no sugar-coating," she said. "I wanted to just tell the truth."

That truth included the early morning of June 10, 2007, when her ex-husband stormed into the Thetford house Tarleton, then 39, shared with her adolescent daughters. Her chapter devoted to that moment, titled "Fire Within," is gripping and horrifying in its graphic, matter-of-fact detail.

"I came to as Herb was dragging me through the house," Tarleton wrote of her ex-husband, who is serving a minimum 30-year prison term. "I could hardly see through the swelling in my eyes and face. I knew what had happened - I knew he was attacking me - and I yelled to the girls, 'Lock yourselves in the bedroom and call the police!'"

Tarleton had never told the full story of that night until she talked to the editors for her book. "It was more difficult than I thought it would be," she said of recounting the tale. But she also knew it was necessary because it meant the story would be in print; she wouldn't have to explain it over and over again.

By telling the story in its complete, terrifying detail, Tarleton purged that night from her consciousness as much as possible. "That was the one thing I wanted," she said. "I didn't want it haunting me."

Seeking understanding

The theme of "Overcome" moves on from the attack to Tarleton's decision to live. Her renewed thirst for life began with a dream two months after the attack in which she gazed upon row upon row of doors until they revealed the message that would turn Tarleton's life around: "Life is a choice."

"My dream, I was sure, was the moment I had chosen to stay, and it had to be for a reason," Tarleton wrote. "With so little power over anything else, that conviction meant something to me."

The process of emotional recovery continued as Tarleton's grueling physical recovery progressed slowly from hospital visit to hospital visit and surgery to surgery (64 and counting, by her estimation). Tarleton had plenty of time to think while enduring all those procedures, and learned the value of taking time to process all that had happened to her.

"Through all my loss, I was starting to feel blessed," Tarleton wrote of a revelation she had in early 2010. "Patience was not about idle waiting; it was about pausing long enough to seek understanding."

Much of Tarleton's understanding came when she decided a few months later to forgive Rodgers for the attack that changed her life forever. "When you are truly tired of something negative in your life," Tarleton wrote, "lasting change can occur."

Tarleton, who hopes to increase her public talks about her life, attended a conference in Galveston, Texas, for burn victims at which she spoke publicly for the first time about her ordeal. That crystallized for her that it was time to move ahead.

"It was no longer a nightmare from which I kept hoping to wake," Tarleton wrote. "It was simply my life."

Musical chemistry

Writing "Overcome" helped Tarleton focus on her recovery instead of her injuries. Another creative pursuit, music, has let Tarleton find a second artistic path toward fulfillment.

Last December she contacted the Blue Mountain Guitar Center just across the Connecticut River in West Lebanon, N.H., to make an appointment for piano lessons. She mentioned that she had played the piano as a child, and that she was legally blind. "I didn't say, 'By the way, I'm disfigured,'" Tarleton said.

The first day she worked with piano teacher Sheldon Stein, Dec. 19, was difficult. They struggled to find a way for Tarleton, who reads with help from lighted magnifying machines, to use sheet music while seated at a keyboard.

Their work paid off not just musically, but also personally. Tarleton and Stein fell in love. "Within a few weeks we really hit it off. To me it's that chemistry," Tarleton said. "I met the person I was meant to meet at this time."

Soon after she said that during the conversation at her apartment, Stein stopped by for a quick visit. "How's your foot feeling?" he asked after giving her a hug. "Better," she replied. "Better is good," he said.

Stein, 63, of North Haverhill, N.H., said he was a "happy bachelor" who wasn't looking for a relationship. "You meet people in your life and some people are more fascinating than others," Stein said. "Her inner spirit is what got my attention, where she'd been and where she wanted to go."

Stein watched as people came up to Tarleton and hugged her, telling her what an inspiration she was. "It's such a cool thing. She's touching people all around," Stein said. "She's wonderful to be with and she's a strong lady."

Confidence from creativity

Much of her relationship with Stein is built around music. Tarleton is reacquainting herself with the piano, but Stein's real musical love is bluegrass, which doesn't have much room for keyboards. So Tarleton asked him to teach her to play banjo.

"That's really fun. That's where I get my release," Tarleton said. The two attended a bluegrass festival in New Hampshire last weekend, and Tarleton even took part in a slow jam session.

"She knows more than she thinks she does," according to Stein.

He has a degree in music education from the University of New Hampshire and has been teaching music since 1975. He has watched students, especially those with disabilities, change their lives when they create music.

He's seen that happen with Tarleton, too. He has watched her take control of her life after years of being forced to let nature and doctors take their course.

"It's time to live, time to do new things," he said. "She can't even see and she's written a book. That's just amazing."

Tarleton embraces the idea that it's time to live by finding new challenges from her artistic endeavors.

"Before I was injured I was just sort of caught in the daily grind of taking care of the kids and going to work and paying the bills," she said. "I never really felt that I was living, but I didn't know that at the time. After I was injured and especially after the last year and hanging out with Sheldon and doing different things, it gave me a whole new perspective that I wasn't really living."

Now she's living so enthusiastically that she's planning a second book, one she writes herself rather than dictating it to editors. She certainly has a lot to write about. She has a new face, new talents and a new love born from music.